[citation][nom]caedenv[/nom]yay for updates! On the one hand it is good to know that I am being kept up to date, while on the other hand I fear reinstalling the system down the road...My winXP and win7 discs are both launch discs.... and oh boy, the updates after a clean install take FOREVER![/citation]Slipstreaming is your friend! Although, with recent releases of Windows, I find that I hardly ever need to do a clean install. I've got some really old OS installs that still work great. I've got one box with WinXP x64, which is built on Server 2003, with a very old OS install that still works great. I think the hardware will break down before the OS needs a reinstall.
The last time I wiped a drive and reinstalled wasn't because the OS became sluggish by normal means. They had found themselves one of the nastiest trojans I've ever seen, that was very difficult to remove cleanly. So it was actually faster to backup vital data and wipe the HDD, than to spend the time fighting with it.
After all, even though updating can take quite a while, it doesn't need much babysitting to download and install updates. I don't really count letting it download crap and install it while I'm doing something else as time invested.